Defendant Says Violent Threats to Wife Were a Call for Help

Erin Hallissy, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Friday, January 14, 2000

2000-01-14 04:00:00 PDT CONTRA COSTA -- A convicted murderer charged with assaulting his wife told jurors yesterday that his expletive-laced tirades that she recorded while allegedly being stalked by him were actually his desperate cries for help.

Gaylin Burleson, who is representing himself in his Contra Costa Superior Court trial, apologized to the jury during opening statements for his profanity during 20 hours of recorded conversation. Excerpts of the tapes made by his estranged wife, a Solano County deputy public defender, were played during the prosecution's opening statement.

"I'm sorry you're going to have to listen to this kind of evidence," Burleson said, hanging his head. "I'm ashamed by this."

Burleson, who sprinkled his statement with vulgarities not usually uttered in court by attorneys, blamed his years behind bars and said, "People in prison use words differently than they do out here."

He said he was drunk during portions in which he threatened to hurt or kill Jane Burleson and called her epithets, and he told jurors she was "my only friend."

"What's going on here is I'm asking for help," he said, quoting a portion in which he told Jane Burleson, "My whole life is dependent on you. I'm scared."

Gaylin Burleson, 49, who could be sentenced to life in prison under California's three strikes law if found guilty, is charged with spousal abuse and assault with a deadly weapon during a January 1995 attack on Jane Burleson. He also is charged with stalking and making terrorist threats.

His case is the longest-running domestic violence prosecution in Contra Costa County, delayed by his changes in lawyers and numerous pretrial motions. He is in custody, and the courtroom is being staffed by four sheriff's deputies because as an attorney he is allowed more freedom to move around in a courtroom than most defendants are.

The trial, expected to last about a month, began with a dramatic account by Deputy District Attorney John Yamaguchi about Jane Burleson's violent relationship with Gaylin Burleson, who has prior convictions for murder in 1971 and robberies in 1983 and 1985.

The two met in state prison when Jane Burleson was working on a civil case, and they married in 1987. Soon after he was paroled and living with Jane Burleson in Martinez, Deputy District Attorney John Yamaguchi told jurors, the violence began.

"There was name-calling. There was abuse. There were threats," Yamaguchi said in his opening statement. Co-workers in the Solano County Public Defender's Office noticed that Jane Burleson was suddenly withdrawn, she wore makeup although she hadn't before, and she walked gingerly.

In October 1993, the couple vacationed in Plumas County. Yamaguchi described a "week's worth of abuse, of violence on Jane" that left her so scared that she fled the cabin wearing only a T-shirt and underwear and called friends to drive six hours to rescue her.

Jane Burleson went back to her husband, though, and was "very protective" of him despite continuing abuse, Yamaguchi said. On Jan. 28, 1995, he grabbed a carving knife and threatened her, and later as she lay in bed he took another butcher knife, poked at her chest and then pounded it into the mattress next to her.

Gaylin Burleson left a few days later, taking the mattress and some possessions, and soon started calling her from out of state with threats that he would kill her and her parents and continually calling her abusive names.

Yamaguchi played several excerpts from the recordings, taped between Jan. 30 and March 17, 1995, as some jurors grimaced at the explicit language. In one, he said, "I'm going to kill you, do you understand that?"

But Gaylin Burleson told jurors that the tapes have "got to be taken in context of these two dysfunctional people."

Gaylin Burleson denied beating his wife during the Plumas County trip, saying she was injured in an auto accident he caused. He also accused her of filing charges against him so she could keep money she inherited instead of splitting it with him in a divorce.

Before reading several excerpts of the phone conversations, Gaylin Burleson characterized them as "20 hours of me saying god awful things. Twenty hours of her listening to that crap." He accused Jane Burleson of editing the tapes, taking out her provocations but recording intervals in which he would "spew garbage in anger."